


Take My Waking Slow

by panharmonium



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:00:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2685245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/panharmonium/pseuds/panharmonium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The elusiveness of sleep, and the practice of patience. Three very early mornings in the Kenobi-Skywalker quarters, once the droids have been dismantled and the pyres burnt down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Days

**Author's Note:**

> This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.  
> What falls away is always. And is near.  
> I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.  
> I learn by going where I have to go.
> 
> Theodore Roethke - The Waking

Anakin startles awake in the middle of the night.  
  
Such disturbances occur with enough regularity that Obi-Wan believes he should simply set his chrono for the inevitable moment when Anakin surfaces from an uneasy sleep, his confusion at the still unfamiliar surroundings seeping through the walls, leaking under the door to his bedroom, a creeping miasma of fear and loneliness permeating every nook and cranny of their shared quarters.  There is no avoiding it; it is their nightly routine.  Anakin wakes; Obi-Wan does not sleep.    
  
They make a pretty pair that way, he supposes.  
  
One night, when the choking torrent of unshielded feeling coming from his untrained Padawan becomes too suffocating to be ignored, Obi-Wan palms open the door to his old room.  “Come with me,” he commands.  
  
They walk the halls, Anakin still in his sleep clothes but swaddled into a recently acquired child-sized robe, its folds primly creased, not yet softened by long use.  The Temple wraps the two of them in an ancient embrace, leaving its other residents to rest safely abed, sleeping soundly, no ghosts dogging their steps, no phantom mothers weaving in and out of their dreams.  
  
Obi-Wan leads Anakin down corridors at a steady pace, no goal in mind other than that of simple exertion.  Up and down wide staircases, across the Grand Concourse, in and out of gathering halls and classroom spaces.  They travel in silence, Anakin occasionally executing a couple of quick hops to keep up, the mantle of pain that burdens him slipping further down his shoulders with every step, fear wrung from him in bits and pieces, dropping to the floor in Dark spatters and left behind.    
  
Drawn by some subtle prompting, either that of the Force or that of not-so-distant memory, Obi-Wan turns into a doorway and paces out into the center of the Map Room, where a glowing holographic projection of the known galaxy spins slowly under the soaring rotunda’s velvety ceiling.  Anakin pauses at the threshold, features bathed in the wash of blue light, then scurries out onto the floor after his master.  Eyes wide, he glances at Obi-Wan uncertainly for permission before scampering into the arena-style seating, climbing and clambering until he reaches a bench high in the cloud of revolving stars.    
  
Myriad planets spin around them in choreographed orbits, each fulfilling its individual role in the pattern of a greater whole, multiple connected players in a silent, stately dance.  Obi-Wan follows the points of light with his eyes, breathing in time with their rotations, mentally naming those he knows in ritual-like recitation, tracing his way out of the Core, past the Expansion Region, into the Rim.  _Coruscant, Vandor, Alderaan, Corellia._    There is no chaos.  _Devaron.  Malastare.  Eriadu._   There is serenity.  
  
“Obi-Wan – master?”  
  
Obi-Wan looks up at this young stranger, perched high on the long curving bench, his outline painted in stars and blue light, the tail end of the Rishi Maze brushing his slight shoulders.  “Yes, Anakin.”  
  
Anakin wavers, then presses forward.  “Where’s Tatooine, master?”  
  
Not for nothing did initiates and Padawans take years upon years of astrocartography.  Obi-Wan ascends a few steps into the rotunda.  “Here,” he says, the pinprick of light that is Tatooine growing brighter at the gentle brush of his finger.  Anakin stares at it, something empty and hungry in his face, a bruising ache spreading out in the Force around him, unshielded as he is.    
  
Obi-Wan turns slightly, obeying the dictate of some as-yet unidentified instinct, and moves his finger to a different nearby orb.  “And your friend Padme lives here.”  Naboo pulses under his touch, a tiny blue heartbeat in the blackness of space.  “You see?  Close.  You were practically neighbors.”  
  
Anakin seems cheered by the thought.  “Can we go back there sometime?” he asks.  “To visit her?  She was nice.”  
  
_Perish the thought,_ Obi-Wan thinks automatically, but does not respond until he has let that flash of alarm go.  _Release_.  “We shall see what the future holds,” he says eventually.  “A Jedi goes where they are needed.”  
  
“Oh.”  Anakin studies the slowly-revolving stars for another long moment.  “But we don’t really want them to need us, do we?”  
  
Perceptive, that one.  Obi-Wan almost smiles.  “Well.  I realize you have seen very little to convince you of this as yet, but Jedi do not respond only to crises.  We are peacekeepers and diplomats first – perhaps we shall have the opportunity to visit the Queen on some more happy occasion.”  
  
“I hope so,” Anakin sighs.  He seems to hesitate for a moment – Obi-Wan feels the ripple of uncertainty roll off him in a tentative wave – but when he speaks, his young voice is confident.  “You should come up here, master,” he pipes, gesturing to the space on the bench next to him.  “You’ll get a better view.”  
  
Obi-Wan obliges this offer, climbing through the rotunda to Anakin’s position and taking a seat beside his small form.  Anakin leans back and drops his head onto the bench behind him, staring up into the universe’s depths.  Reflections of passing stars wink in and out of his eyes.  “I thought I was going to see all these places,” he confesses.  “But there’s a lot of them.  I didn’t think so many – I don’t know if I can do it.”  
  
Obi-Wan leans back too, relaxing a bit.  Just a bit.  Tomorrow is another night, after all.  “Have patience,” he counsels.  “You will see more of these planets than you can count, soon enough.”  
  
“Wish it were sooner,” Anakin grumps, but his attempt at a determined scowl twists into a gaping yawn, and Obi-Wan does smile then, a flicker of amusement flaring warm in his aching chest.    
  
“Peace, little one.”  He puts more than a small degree of Force-persuasion behind the words, and watches with satisfaction as Anakin’s eyelids flutter closed, the boy dragged almost immediately down into sleep, a victim of Obi-Wan’s not-inconsiderable powers of Force-suggestion.  The young Knight rests his elbows on the bench behind him and resumes his vigil over the wheeling galaxy in solitude.  “Soon enough will be soon enough for both of us.”     
  



	2. Weeks

Obi-Wan does not sleep.    
  
Not much, and not well, certainly not enough to satisfy his solicitous friends or the Temple healers, both of whose well-meaning inquiries he has so far managed to assiduously avoid.    
  
Although – while true rest remains elusive, it is relatively easy to disappear into the Force, once Anakin has been put to bed – to allow pure physicality to temporarily erase his awareness of the more perilous realms of thought and emotion.  In pursuit of just such an outcome, he makes his fifth repetition of the Still Waters kata just as he had completed his first four, in the long form, holding each position for a generous count of fifty, meditation cushions and low table pushed carefully out of the way.  
  
He can attain a stillness here that feels impossible everywhere else.  Part of him knows this is an illusion, a pleasant fantasy woven by the distraction of physical exertion and the lateness of the hour.  The other part of him would like to believe it is true, that he has achieved some measure of victory over the seemingly permanent stone wedged in his center, the foreign body weighing him down, disrupting his previously comfortable balance.  
  
“Master?”  
  
Twenty-five years of exacting training allow Obi-Wan to conceal his surprise, if only just.  He had not even noticed Anakin peering from around the doorframe.  In the absence of anyone else to chide him, he provides the obligatory reprimand himself.  _Be mindful._  
  
“Anakin,” he says, allowing the barest trace of gentle disapproval to pass between them.  “It is very late.”  
  
The boy shuffles his feet, still half concealed behind the door.  “I woke up.”  
  
When no further information is forthcoming, Obi-Wan beckons him out.  “You needn’t hover.”  
  
Anakin pads out into the common area uncertainly, shifting from foot to foot.  Obi-Wan, wishing futilely that he could dispel this child’s nervousness with a word, sinks down onto a meditation cushion, waiting.  
  
“Why do you do that?” Anakin asks eventually.  
  
“Do what?”  
  
“That dance,” Anakin says, making a _very_ rough interpretation of the Still Waters positions with his arms.  “You always do the same one.”  
  
“It is properly called a kata,” Obi-Wan says, carefully avoiding the original question.  “Not a dance.  All Jedi learn them here, in classes, or with their masters.”  
  
Anakin looks intrigued.  “Why do you do it in the middle of the night?”  
  
Obi-Wan wishes immediately that there were some tactful way to abort this conversation.  How best to answer?  He cannot very well explain his real reasons to this impressionable and inexperienced child.  _Why do I do it?  Because I cannot do anything else.  Because I am too agitated for sleep, too imbalanced for meditation.  Because a Jedi should be as still water on a windless day, and I am not.  I am still seeking.  I am..._   “I am practicing.”  He settles on this.  
   
Anakin climbs up onto the plain settee, all ears.  “Practicing what?”  
  
_Peace,_ he thinks, but – “Patience,” he says, and this is true, too.  Some things can only be endured.  
  
Anakin wrinkles his nose.  “I’m not a very patient person,” he admits.  
  
Obi-Wan’s mouth curls up slightly at the corners.  “You don’t say.”  
  
“I could practice it with you,” Anakin suggests hopefully.  “That – kata, or whatever you call it.  You could teach me.”  
  
Obi-Wan unfolds himself from the meditation cushion and pushes himself to his feet, gesturing for Anakin to follow.  He leads the boy back towards the smaller bedroom.  “The Still Waters kata is too advanced for you at the present moment, I think.”  Anakin’s face falls, and Obi-Wan holds up a hand to forestall any argument.  “ _But,_ ” he says, opening the door to Anakin’s sleep chamber and ushering him inside, “if you are patient tonight, we may begin work on the first of the Level 1 forms tomorrow.”  
  
Anakin looks up at him eagerly from the bed.  “Or we could start it now.  You’re awake, and I’m not sleepy – ”        
  
“On the contrary,” Obi-Wan says, “I believe you are very tired.”  
  
Anakin blinks at him in confusion.  “No, master – ”  
  
Obi-Wan crooks his fingers warningly into the gesture of Force compulsion.  “ _Quite_ fatigued,” he reiterates.  
  
Comprehension dawns on Anakin’s face, and he yanks the covers up to his chin hurriedly.  “Master!  You don’t need to.  I’ll be patient.  I promise.”  
  
Obi-Wan studies him, a faint line appearing between his brows.  “Have a care, Anakin,” he cautions quietly.  “Do not make me – or _anyone_ , for that matter – a promise you don’t intend to keep.”  
  
“I do intend to keep it, master!” Anakin says earnestly.  “I will.  I’ll be patient.”  He scrunches his eyes shut, as if to illustrate the point.  “And I’ll go to sleep.  Right now.”    
  
Obi-Wan knows he will try.  Perhaps that is the best they can hope for, at the moment.  “Very well.”  He waves the lights off.  “Until tomorrow, then.”  
  
Padawan thus safely ensconced under the covers, Obi-Wan lets the door swish shut behind him with a hushed click of servos.  His gaze travels over the rest of their quarters.  The living area seems abnormally quiet without Anakin’s rambling chatter.    
  
Dimming the lights with a wave of his hand, he pulls a meditation cushion into the middle of the room, settling cross-legged upon it, hands resting lightly on his knees.  He is suddenly too tired for kata, not tired enough for sleep.  Never tired enough for that, it seems.     
  
Striated lights slide across the walls, distorted reflections of Coruscant’s midnight traffic streams tracing slow kaleidoscope curves through the transparent balcony doors.  Obi-Wan closes his eyes and nudges the doors open with his mind, a gentle draft of night air curling around his motionless form.  _Cultivate stillness.  Practice peace.  Have patience._   He is the picture of still waters on the outside, he knows.  It is the inside, where only he and the Force can see, that worries him.  
  
A ripple of something, from the smaller bedroom.  Anakin, still awake, turning over, fervently determined in his tragicomically doomed attempt to fulfill a promise hastily made, and even more hastily regretted.  So very young...  
  
And yet so very well-intentioned.  
  
Obi-Wan finds suddenly that he is able to take in a deep meditative breath.  He centers, filling himself with cool night air until his cup overflows, the reassuring currents of the Force brimming over and pooling in all his empty places. 

They are both trying.  It is enough, for the moment.


	3. Months

They wake before dawn, and greet the sun together.  
  
This is customary for Obi-Wan, who, once some semblance of sleep trickles back to him, falls easily back into old grooves worn deep by long habit. Violent change in circumstance had been a heavy stone dropped into calm waters, radiating outward and resculpting the surface of all that had once been familiar, but even the new contours of his life cannot provide reason enough for him to abandon every tradition, forsake all the comforts of routine.  He still kneels in meditation posture on the small balcony outside the rooms he and Anakin share, continues to breathe in dark morning air, continues to disregard the chill of the deck under his knees in favor of the damp breeze on his face, because _it is worth a little discomfort, young one, to remind yourself that Life is not, after all, meant to be confined to quarters._  
  
It is not quite so customary for Anakin, perhaps, who has worked hard every day of his life, but not so very early.  Obi-Wan does not ask the boy to accompany him, preferring that Anakin face his long and tightly packed days well-rested, but Anakin joins him anyway, of his own accord – stunned with sleep and rubbing grit from his eyes, sleep shirt hopelessly rumpled and hair smashed flat in comically uneven patches – but present each morning nonetheless, folded on the deck at Obi-Wan’s side, uninvited but not unwelcome – desiring, it seems, the company of his master more than the comforts of his bed.  Whether this springs from Anakin’s own needs, or from what Anakin perceives to be Obi-Wan’s, the young Knight cannot know, but neither possibility concerns him overmuch.  Should it prove the former, a need for reassurance in the face of such sudden and total upheaval would be no sin in a boy of Anakin’s age, and if the latter – well.  Obi-Wan will never fault him for compassion.  
  
The door to their small shared quarters stays shut tight against the early morning air’s brisk bite, a translucent barrier separating inner and outer worlds.  Anakin, try as he might, cannot keep from watching the sunrise’s radiant colors bleed across the horizon, and he persistently peeks, his outer fidgetiness a mirror for Obi-Wan’s less visible but no less persistent inner imbalance.  Obi-Wan, disturbed or no, sinks into the Force with eyes closed.  He does not need to see the lightening of the sky to know that the sun is coming. 

This is a degree of faith and trust he has not yet cultivated between himself and his Padawan, though he believes – _hopes_ , if he’s honest – he has planted the correct seeds.  
  
The first rays of sunlight slide down over the balcony, warmth bathing Obi-Wan’s brow, cheeks, his closed eyelids. Anakin pops up, brushes out his sleep pants, leans over the wall as if to meet the rising ball of fire, small hands clasped around a rail slick with condensation.  Paces the length of the balcony, bare feet slapping on the chill deck.  Sticks his hands into the cluster of plants still residing in one corner of the balcony; flings dew from his arms.  Paces back, _slap slap slap_.  Forward.  Railing.  Shakes himself all over, tiny braid spinning out behind his ear.  Blows out his breath in a puff of vapor and plops back down, one knee pressed into Obi-Wan’s thigh, trying anew in his clumsy, childish way to be still.  
  
Obi-Wan breathes in Light, breathes out loss, accepts his young companion’s fidgeting and fussing without a word.  Breathes in grace, breathes out grief, waits for Anakin’s breathing to even out and flow, synchronize with his own.    
  
He will be patient.  The sun rises every day, and peace will come in time.


End file.
